He had half risen on his arm. One hand clutched his wounded breast, but in his face, the face not of the native but of the foreign born, and struggling with the agony and pallor of death, shone an unspeakable joy. His lips were parted, his wide eyes fixed and bright. One could see they were following the triumphant. charge of his own victorious side. It was the face of Theodore Meier. Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori.

Through the weary hours of my journey the picture haunted me. Bradford was again in Venice when I arrived, and one morning, as I was about to step into my gondola, I ran across him. At my invitation he joined me, and we were soon gliding out towards the Lido.

"Well, I have been to Paris," I said. He nodded.

"Dulce et decorum," I continued. "Your picture has certainly created a stir. Why, they told me it had actually made

Americans of some of your compatriots and sent them back to fight. And the people who know say it is good."

"Yes, I believe it is good," he assented, moodily.

"It was even rumored you had gone back."

His face lighted up with its old whimsical smile.

"I am not sure I didn't for a moment half form a resolve to go," he said.

"You might have won another medal, or a cross, or whatever kind of decoration they bestow over there for bravery on the field of battle. By the way, you must show me your medal."

"One doesn't wear them, you know," said Bradford, throwing open his coat, as if to corroborate his assertion. After a pause he added, gravely, "I sent it here to the boy. I told him that it belonged to him. His mother wrote me it was buried with him."

T is hardly probable that any English critic, not even excepting Augustine Birrell, who is a notorious Borrowlover, would place George Borrow's works1 on a list of the most important contributions to the English literature of the nineteenth century; but all critics agree that the author of " Lavengro" and "The Bible in Spain" is one of the singular and interesting personalities in the literary history of the last hundred years in England.

Borrow was a curious mixture of the adventurer and religious fanatic. He sprang from a family of humble position and circumstances, and was without education in the modern sense of the word; but he was born with an extraordinary gift for acquiring abstruse and difficult languages. Owing partly to this gift and partly to his love of wandering, he obtained the position of agent of the Bible Society, and in this capacity made some remarkable

journeys into Russia, Portugal, and Spain. While his faithfulness in performing his duty as colporteur is not to be questioned, it must be confessed that his enthusiasm for observing how men and women live and think and talk beyond the borders of English conventional society was quite as great as his enthusiasm for the cause of religion; so it happens that "The Bible in Spain," notwithstanding its gentle title, is about as robust a story of adventure as one could ask for. Borrow's life may be outlined in a few words: he wandered in various parts of the world studying nature and human nature; became a linguist of some renown in his time; made himself an expert in Gypsy life and lore; and in a mass of writing, some of it incoherent and ordinary, has left many things that form a permanent contribution to literature. There is just now a Borrow revival, and along with it the inevitable small band of extravagant admirers-Borrovians, let us call them just as there are Browningites, Wagnerians, Stevensonians, Brahmsites, Meredithians, Omarists, and the like. It is a pity that the extravagance of the few often prejudices the many, thus turning the enthusiasm of the disciple into a hin

drance instead of a help to the master. But one does not need to be faddist in order to admire "The Bible in Spain;" it is the best of Borrow's books for one making his acquaintance to read, although perhaps "Lavengro" has more of the mysterious Borrow flavor which your true Borrovian insists is the distinguishing merit of his favorite author. The best modern champion-and altogether a sane one, too—of George Borrow's claim to a princedom of letters is Mr. Augustine Birrell, who has written a charming essay on the semi-Gypsy Englishman-an essay to be found in his volume entitled "Res Judicatæ." The man who can read this essay and refrain from buying or borrow ing a copy of "The Bible in Spain" is a hardened specimen indeed. In recognizing Mr. Augustine Birrell as the most skillful champion of the Borrovian cause we do not mean to forget Professor William I. Knapp, whose life of Borrow was published a year ago by the Messrs. Putnam. Professor Knapp knows more about Borrow, perhaps, than any other living man, but he has made his biography not only exhaustive but almost exhausting; it is choked with a mass of dry details; and it reads like a chronicle of dates and statistics instead of a record of the life of a very active, full-blooded, and unconventional traveler. The crowded condition of his pages is proclaimed by Professor Knapp himself with amusing naïveté. He says in his preface:

The second year (1896) saw the composition of the Life half completed; but, alas! on a scale much too minute and exhaustive, as the publishers were not slow to assure me. Bowing to their cooler judgment, as the thermometers of opinion, against my own enthusiasm, the whole was rewritten in '97 and concluded the present year on a more conservative scale.

The more conservative scale being two large volumes of nearly four hundred pages each! In another paragraph of his preface Professor Knapp continues:

And now for a few figures. Mr. Borrow's correspondence, in so far as it fell to me, numbers 937 letters, including six belonging to his father, dated from 1798 to 1812. The letters I have written and received on the subject of this book number 786. These letters, and the documents, records, certificates, extracts, and other matter designed to sustain my statements, are pasted into large quarto files aggregating 2,578 pages. I have read or examined 1,075

distinct books exclusive of those cited in my volumes.

It is not in this arithmetical spirit that good biography is written; certainly it is the farthest possible from the spirit in which Borrow himself thought or wrote. There is nothing of the scrap-book, or card catalogue, or letter-file, or dust-of-the-library about him! He preferred men and women to paper and ink. One of the very best things in Professor Knapp's two volumes, the story of the Irish fiddler, illustrates Borrow's love and knowledge of life and nature as opposed to books and statistics. It is told by Borrow of an incident happening during his famous tramp through wild Wales, and, in the complete and unmutilated form which follows, was rescued by Professor Knapp from the oblivion of manuscript archives:

After walking about a mile (from Cerrig y that is, a leg which, either by nature or acciDrudion) I overtook a man with a game leg, dent, not being so long as its brother leg, had a patten attached to it about five inches high, to enable it to do duty with the other. He features, and was dressed in ragged coat and was a fellow with red shock hair and very red breeches, and a hat which had lost part of its crown and all of its rim; so that, even without a game leg, he would have looked rather a queer figure. In his hand he carried a fiddle. "Good morning to you," said I.

"A good morning to your hanner, a merry afternoon, and a roaring joyous evening-that is the worst luck I wish to ye."

"Are you a native of these parts?" said I. "Not exactly, your hanner-I am a native of the city of Dublin, or, what's all the same thing, of the village of Donnybrook, which is close by it."

"A celebrated place," said I.

"Your hanner may say that; all the world has heard of Donnybrook, owing to the humors of its fair. Many is the merry tune I have played to the boys at that fair."

66

You are a professor of music, I suppose." "And not a very bad one, as your hanner will say if you allow me to play you a tune." "Can you play 'Croppies,' Lie Down'?"

"I cannot, your hanner; my fingers never learnt to play such a blackguard tune; but if ye wish to hear Croppies, Get Up,' I can oblige ye."

"No," said I, "it's a tune that doesn't please my ears. If, however, you choose to play Croppies, Lie Down,' I'll give you a shilling."

"Your hanner will give me a shilling?"

"Yes," said I, "if you play Croppies, Lie Down; but you know you can't play it; your fingers never learned the tune."

1" Croppy" is one who has had his hair cropped short in prison, and refers here to the Irish Catholic rebels of the last century.

And drink full of hope,

Bad luck to the Devil, Pretender, and Pope!
And down, down, Croppies, lie down."

"More blackguard Orange words I never heard," cried the fiddler, on my coming to the conclusion of the third stanza. "Devil a bit farther will I play-at any rate, till I get the shilling."

"Here it is for you," said I; "the song is ended, and, of course, the tune."

"Thank your hanner," said the fiddler, taking the money; "your hanner has kept his word with me, which is more than I thought your hanner would do. And now, your han

ner, let me ask you, why did your hanner wish for that tune, which is not only a blackguard one, but quite out of date; and where did your hanner get the words?"

"I used to hear the tune in my boyish days." said I, "and wished to hear it again; for, though you call it a blackguard tune, it is the sweetest and most noble air that Ireland, the land of music, has ever produced. As for the words, never mind where I got them they are violent enough, but not half so violent as the words of some of the songs made against the Irish Protestants by the priests.".

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Well, your hanner, the Orange is now in the kennel, and the Croppies have it all their own way."

"And perhaps," said I, "before I die, the Orange will be out of the kennel and the Croppies in, even as they were in my young days. . . . Farewell!"

་་

Farewell, your hanner; and here's another scratch of the illigant tune your hanner is so fond of, to cheer up your hanner's ears upon your way."

"And long after I had left him I could hear him playing on his fiddle, in first-rate style, the beautiful tune of "Down, Down, Croppies, Lie Down."

This passage is an epitome of George Borrow-it shows his charm of style, his keenness of wit, his appreciation of humor, his skill in sketching a picturesque character in a few bold strokes, his love of the life of the road, and his unexplained, and to some people very mysterious, hatred of the Roman Catholic Church. The great defect in Borrow was his almost lawless egotism. He had a spark of true genius; if he had been less insistent on having his own way and his own rights, if he had been more open to the advice and criticism of friends, he might have been a star of steady shining instead of a flashing but unsteady and often headlong comet in the literary firmament.

The reader of Borrow now has the choice of two recently published editions, one of volumes convenient to the hand but rather small of type (John Lane), the other, edited by Professor Knapp, of larger volume and type and in every way an admirable library edition (Putnams).

A

LITTLE piece of the restive, ambitious Western World transplanted into the heart of the languid Orient is the American Woman's College at Constantinople. The influence of its presence in the hitherto undisturbed atmosphere of Eastern indolent ease has produced some striking contrasts which particularly impress the visitor for the first time entering its gates. Her mind is left with only half a grasp of all she has seen when she emerges. High walls encompass this house of learning where the American system of education is practiced; dusky, turbaned natives stand like bronze pillars at either side of the portico through which the stranger is permitted to pass; within, lying in characteristic impassivity beneath a widespreading umbrella-tree, fondling a book or deep in study, is a young girl whose features tell of Greece, Turkey, Albania, Roumania, or Russia. A moment's contemplation of this picture, and a delicious haze steals over the beholder; it is in the air, it is infectious, and even the wanderer from the prosaic Occident is not immune to its subtle somnolence.

the tall ones linked together by low covered passageways, is upon you, and an upward glance quickens thought and heartbeat, and routs the reverie. There are the Stars and Stripes waving a welcome!

With step more alert, you ascend the broad white stairs and pass the portals. Once inside, the sound of your native tongue and a glimpse of the portraits of Washington and Lincoln further assure you that you are almost as at home, and every experience seems to confirm this impression. Now you can reconcile what appeared at first to be contradictions. The college is no longer out of place; it is the people. There are greetings from the American president, with none of the formality that conventionality dictates as fitting between strangers-both are Americans. Ecstatically you question and listen by turns as room after room in the main building is inspected. Next you are taken to the roof, where a magnificent view of the setting of the College is outspread.

To the south lies Chalcedon, once the residence of the blind Belisarius of Byzantium, where sat the famous Ecumenical Council that condemned the Monophysites. Giant's Mountain, on the north, affords some compensation in its beauty of color and outline for shutting off the Black Sea, a dozen miles away, where Joshua sat to bathe his feet. Nearer by is the Bosphorus, its winding wooded shores lined with the stately palaces of the pashas, and rising from their midst is Robert College, the American school for boys. ward lies the harbor of the Golden Horn,

West